Providing Clean Water

Clean water, sanitation, and hygiene education are basic necessities for a healthy environment and a productive life. When people have access to clean water and sanitation, waterborne diseases decrease, children stay healthier and attend school more regularly, and mothers can spend less time carrying water and more time helping their families. Rotary clubs bring sustainable clean water, sanitation, and hygiene to people around the world.

The Rotary Club of Philadelphia sponsored a Piave Community Water Expansion project to provide clean water in Nakuru, Kenya.

In partnership with Ekenywa, a nonprofit organization working to improve the quality of life for underprivileged school age children by bringing access to clean drinking water, education, and creative arts programs, our club funded the remaining costs needed for the water tower with storage.

Previously, residents collected water from a river that is 4 km away and is unprotected and harbors disease, wasting productive working time walking hours for water. The school children were provided with safe water in school but the water tower and tank storage was needed to meet the demand for the entire community and to continue providing safe water to the children in their homes.

An estimated 7,000+ people now benefit, with increased access to a safe and reliable water supply, increasing the quality of life for the residents of the Piave community.

Our Foundation also awarded a grant to build a toilet at the Gituri School in Embu county, Kenya, vastly improving sanitation, hygiene and health.

Gituri Primary School is a public school for children between ages of 6‒13 years, with an attendance of 400 students from the surrounding villages. The parents of these children live below the poverty line with most of them earning less than a dollar a day.

The students, sharing two pit toilets and one urinal, are exposed to health hazards due to the poor sanitation, especially during the wet seasons that occur three times in the year, typically in the months of May, July and October when the schools are in session. Due to the poverty levels, a majority of them do not own shoes, so they step on the toilet filth with their bare feet. The current sanitation block does not have running water where they can wash their hands after visiting the toilets. This exposes them to health conditions like cholera. Better sanitation drastically reduces absenteeism, raises academic performance levels, and improves the children’s health and quality of life.

View video: Gituri Primary School Vote of Thanks

Most recently, our Foundation outreach efforts helped to support building a conduction line through Engineers Without Borders USA’s program that provides clean water to residents of Aldea Las Lagunes Cuaches, Guatemala.

“This community is without safe drinking water and cases of waterborne ailments, such as diarrhea and skin illnesses are on the rise,” according to Kaitlin McGee, representative from Engineers Without Borders, Philadelphia Chapter. The conduction line is the first step in providing clean water to more than 3800 residents.

PROVIDING CLEAN WATER

Providing Clean Water

The Rotary Club of Philadelphia focuses its outreach on those in need and those less fortunate primarily in its community and also via international activity. Our goal is to be among Greater Philadelphia’s most active humanitarian organizations which improve lives..